Chandigarh, July 27
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) took stern notice of the failed Covid-19 vaccination campaign in Punjab and accused the state and the central government of gross negligence and demanded the resignation of Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu. In a joint statement issued from the party headquarters here on Tuesday, senior party leader and MLA Aman Arora and Youth Wing president and MLA Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer said that on one hand, the country and the world is in panic in the name of the third Covid wave; while on the other hand, only 5.35 percent of the population in Punjab had been able to get a second dose under the vaccination campaign. “This means that more than 94 per cent of the population is at risk of Covid. This is directly the incompetence of the state and central government which has left the people of Punjab in the lurch,” they added.
Aman Arora said that the ruling Congress, especially the Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu, who wasted crores of rupees from the public exchequer on ‘Mission Fateh’, should explain why he has been so careless in the fight against Covid and vaccination campaign. “Because so far only 17.62 lakh people have been able to get the two doses needed for complete protection from Corona, while the number of people taking the first dose is only 77.16 lakh, which is not even one third of the total population,” he said.
Aman Arora and Meet Hayer demanded the resignation of Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu on moral grounds and said that the Health Minister and the Captain government could not run away from their responsibility just by blaming the lack of vaccines on the centre. The AAP leaders said that the ruling Congress had squashed all the important issues of Punjab during their infighting. “The Covid-19 vaccination campaign would not have flopped to such an extent, if the Congressmen would have made rounds for it; as they made to Delhi to grab or save the chair,” they said.
Aman Arora and Meet Hayer further accused the Modi-led central government of discriminating against Punjab. They appealed to the Modi government to abandon the vindictive spirit due to the farmers’ agitation and send adequate doses of Covid vaccines to the people of the state; so that the people of Punjab could be protected from a possible third Covid wave attack.
